Professor of Political Science, Brown University
COREY BRETTSCHNEIDER is professor of political science at Brown University, where he teaches courses in political theory and public law. He is also professor, by courtesy, of philosophy. Brettschneider was a Rockefeller faculty fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values for the 2010-2011 academic year, a visiting associate professor at Harvard Law School for the 2009 winter term, and a faculty fellow at Harvard's Safra Center for Ethics for the 2006-2007 academic year. Brettschneider received a PhD in politics from Princeton University and a JD from Stanford University. He is the author ofWhen the State Speaks, What Should it Say? How Democracies Can Protect Expression and Promote Equality, (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Democratic Rights: The Substance of Self-Government (Princeton University Press, 2007). Brettschneider is also the author of a casebook, Constitutional Law and American Democracy: Cases and Readings, (Aspen Publishers/Wolters Kluwer Law and Business, 2011). His articles include "A Transformative Theory of Religious Freedom," in Political Theory (2010), "When the State Speaks, What Should it Say? Democratic Persuasion and the Freedom of Expression," in Perspectives on Politics (2010), and "The Politics of the Personal: A Liberal Approach," in the American Political Science Review (2007).
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; CEO, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Chief Executive Officer at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
He writes on constitutional law and its history—with particular emphasis on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, judicial office, administrative power, and unconstitutional conditions.
His books are Separation of Church and State (Harvard 2002), Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard 2008), Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Chicago 2014), The Administrative Threat (Encounter 2017), and Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech (Chicago 2018). A forthcoming book is Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom (Harvard 2021).
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He has twice received the Sutherland Prize for the most significant contribution to English legal history, and has been awarded the Henry Paolucci - Walter Bagehot Book Award, the Hayek Book Prize, and the Bradley Prize.
United States District Court, Eastern District of New York
William Francis Kuntz II is a United States district judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The United States Senate confirmed him on October 3, 2011. He received his judicial commission on October 4, 2011.
Judge Kuntz was a commercial litigator in private practice in New York, and had been a partner at the law firm of Baker Hostetler since 2005. He has been a partner at several law firms in New York during his career, including Torys LLP from 2001 to 2004, Seward & Kissel LLP from 1994 to 2001, and Milgrim, Thomajan, Jacobs & Lee from 1986 to 1994. In addition, he worked as Counsel at Constantine Cannon from 2004 to 2005, and as an associate at Shearman & Sterling LLP from 1978 to 1986. Since 1987, Kuntz has served as a Commissioner of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, supervising hundreds of investigations into allegations of abuse by members of the New York City Police Department. From 1987 to 2003, he was an adjunct associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, teaching a course in American legal history. He received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1972 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1977. Kuntz also received an M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from Harvard University in 1974 and 1979, respectively.
William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
William (Bill) Marshall joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2001 and serves as the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law. His teaching and research interests include the first amendment, presidential power, election law, federal jurisdiction, federal judicial selection, civil procedure, and media law. Marshall is the author of numerous book chapters, articles, and essays on free speech, separation of powers, the Establishment Clause, and the Free Exercise Clause. His work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Supreme Court Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review, among others.
Marshall received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Marshall was Deputy Counsel to the President and Deputy Assistant to the President during the Clinton Administration and also served as the Solicitor General for the State of Ohio. He has taught at the Northwestern, Boston University, Vanderbilt, Ohio State, DePaul, Case Western Reserve, William and Mary, and the University Connecticut law schools. Prior to beginning his teaching career, Marshall was a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Professor of Political Science, Brown University
COREY BRETTSCHNEIDER is professor of political science at Brown University, where he teaches courses in political theory and public law. He is also professor, by courtesy, of philosophy. Brettschneider was a Rockefeller faculty fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values for the 2010-2011 academic year, a visiting associate professor at Harvard Law School for the 2009 winter term, and a faculty fellow at Harvard's Safra Center for Ethics for the 2006-2007 academic year. Brettschneider received a PhD in politics from Princeton University and a JD from Stanford University. He is the author ofWhen the State Speaks, What Should it Say? How Democracies Can Protect Expression and Promote Equality, (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Democratic Rights: The Substance of Self-Government (Princeton University Press, 2007). Brettschneider is also the author of a casebook, Constitutional Law and American Democracy: Cases and Readings, (Aspen Publishers/Wolters Kluwer Law and Business, 2011). His articles include "A Transformative Theory of Religious Freedom," in Political Theory (2010), "When the State Speaks, What Should it Say? Democratic Persuasion and the Freedom of Expression," in Perspectives on Politics (2010), and "The Politics of the Personal: A Liberal Approach," in the American Political Science Review (2007).
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; CEO, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Chief Executive Officer at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
He writes on constitutional law and its history—with particular emphasis on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, judicial office, administrative power, and unconstitutional conditions.
His books are Separation of Church and State (Harvard 2002), Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard 2008), Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Chicago 2014), The Administrative Threat (Encounter 2017), and Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech (Chicago 2018). A forthcoming book is Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom (Harvard 2021).
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He has twice received the Sutherland Prize for the most significant contribution to English legal history, and has been awarded the Henry Paolucci - Walter Bagehot Book Award, the Hayek Book Prize, and the Bradley Prize.
United States District Court, Eastern District of New York
William Francis Kuntz II is a United States district judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The United States Senate confirmed him on October 3, 2011. He received his judicial commission on October 4, 2011.
Judge Kuntz was a commercial litigator in private practice in New York, and had been a partner at the law firm of Baker Hostetler since 2005. He has been a partner at several law firms in New York during his career, including Torys LLP from 2001 to 2004, Seward & Kissel LLP from 1994 to 2001, and Milgrim, Thomajan, Jacobs & Lee from 1986 to 1994. In addition, he worked as Counsel at Constantine Cannon from 2004 to 2005, and as an associate at Shearman & Sterling LLP from 1978 to 1986. Since 1987, Kuntz has served as a Commissioner of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, supervising hundreds of investigations into allegations of abuse by members of the New York City Police Department. From 1987 to 2003, he was an adjunct associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, teaching a course in American legal history. He received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1972 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1977. Kuntz also received an M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from Harvard University in 1974 and 1979, respectively.
William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
William (Bill) Marshall joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2001 and serves as the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law. His teaching and research interests include the first amendment, presidential power, election law, federal jurisdiction, federal judicial selection, civil procedure, and media law. Marshall is the author of numerous book chapters, articles, and essays on free speech, separation of powers, the Establishment Clause, and the Free Exercise Clause. His work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Supreme Court Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review, among others.
Marshall received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Marshall was Deputy Counsel to the President and Deputy Assistant to the President during the Clinton Administration and also served as the Solicitor General for the State of Ohio. He has taught at the Northwestern, Boston University, Vanderbilt, Ohio State, DePaul, Case Western Reserve, William and Mary, and the University Connecticut law schools. Prior to beginning his teaching career, Marshall was a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
President and CEO, Castro Synergies, LLC and Commissioner, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Marty Castro is the President and CEO of Castro Synergies, LLC, which provides strategic consulting services to corporations, entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations that seek to collaborate with and have a positive social impact on diverse communities.
Mr. Castro was appointed by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in January of 2011.
In December 2009, Mr. Castro was appointed by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn to Chair the Illinois Human Rights Commission. The Human Rights Commission is the State public body that arbitrates complaints of civil rights violations in housing, employment, public accommodations and financial credit.
Mr. Castro is chair of the board of the National Museum of Mexican Art, the only accredited Latino Museum in the United States. He also serves on the board of the Chicago Community Trust. Mr. Castro is a former national board member of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and former chair of the Hispanic National Bar Association’s U.S. Supreme Court Committee. Mr. Castro is also the former chair of the Judicial Nominations Commission for the Northern District of Illinois, by appointment of U.S. Senator Richard Durbin.
For his leadership and accomplishments, Mr. Castro has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the National Medical Fellowships’ Humanitarian Award; the Hispanic National Bar Association’s Cesar Chavez Humanitarian Award; the Edwin A. Rothschild Civil Liberties Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois; and the Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Corporate Counsel, Chicago Chapter.
Mr. Castro received his B.A. in political science in 1985 from DePaul University and his Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1988.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights, University of North Carolina School of Law
Theodore M. Shaw is the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill. Professor Shaw teaches Civil Procedure and Advanced Constitutional Law/Fourteenth Amendment. Before joining the faculty of UNC Law School, from 2008-2014 Professor Shaw taught at Columbia University Law School, where he was Professor of Professional Practice. During that time he was also “Of Counsel” to the law firm of Norton Rose Fulbright (formerly Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP). His practice involved civil litigation and representation of institutional clients on matters concerning diversity and civil rights.
Professor Shaw was the fifth Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., for which he worked in various capacities over the span of twenty-six years. He has litigated education, employment, voting rights, housing, police misconduct, capital punishment and other civil rights cases in trial and appellate courts, and in the United States Supreme Court.From 1982 until 1987, he litigated education, housing, and capital punishment cases and directed LDF's education litigation docket. In 1987, under the direction of LDF's third Director-Counsel, Julius Chambers, Mr. Shaw relocated to Los Angeles to establish LDF's Western Regional Office. In 1990, Mr. Shaw left LDF to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, where he taught Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Civil Rights. While at Michigan, he played a key role in initiating a review of the law school's admissions practices and policies, and served on the faculty committee that promulgated the admissions program that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger.
In 1993, Mr. Shaw returned to LDF as Associate Director-Counsel, and in 2004, he became LDF's fifth Director-Counsel. Mr. Shaw's legal career began as a Trial Attorney in the Honors Program of the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., where he worked from 1979 until 1982.
Mr. Shaw has testified on numerous occasions before Congress and before state and local legislatures. His human rights work has taken him to Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. In addition to teaching at Columbia and at Michigan Law School, Professor Shaw held the 1997-1998 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law at Queens College and the 2003 Phyllis Beck Chair at Temple Law School. He was a visiting scholar at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia in 2008-2009. He is a member of the faculty of the Practicing Law Institute (PLI).
Mr. Shaw served on the Obama Transition Team after the 2008 presidential election, as team leader for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
Freelance Journalist and Author
Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.
Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.
Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.
Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.
Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.
Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
President and CEO, Castro Synergies, LLC and Commissioner, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Marty Castro is the President and CEO of Castro Synergies, LLC, which provides strategic consulting services to corporations, entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations that seek to collaborate with and have a positive social impact on diverse communities.
Mr. Castro was appointed by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in January of 2011.
In December 2009, Mr. Castro was appointed by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn to Chair the Illinois Human Rights Commission. The Human Rights Commission is the State public body that arbitrates complaints of civil rights violations in housing, employment, public accommodations and financial credit.
Mr. Castro is chair of the board of the National Museum of Mexican Art, the only accredited Latino Museum in the United States. He also serves on the board of the Chicago Community Trust. Mr. Castro is a former national board member of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and former chair of the Hispanic National Bar Association’s U.S. Supreme Court Committee. Mr. Castro is also the former chair of the Judicial Nominations Commission for the Northern District of Illinois, by appointment of U.S. Senator Richard Durbin.
For his leadership and accomplishments, Mr. Castro has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the National Medical Fellowships’ Humanitarian Award; the Hispanic National Bar Association’s Cesar Chavez Humanitarian Award; the Edwin A. Rothschild Civil Liberties Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois; and the Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Corporate Counsel, Chicago Chapter.
Mr. Castro received his B.A. in political science in 1985 from DePaul University and his Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1988.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights, University of North Carolina School of Law
Theodore M. Shaw is the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill. Professor Shaw teaches Civil Procedure and Advanced Constitutional Law/Fourteenth Amendment. Before joining the faculty of UNC Law School, from 2008-2014 Professor Shaw taught at Columbia University Law School, where he was Professor of Professional Practice. During that time he was also “Of Counsel” to the law firm of Norton Rose Fulbright (formerly Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP). His practice involved civil litigation and representation of institutional clients on matters concerning diversity and civil rights.
Professor Shaw was the fifth Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., for which he worked in various capacities over the span of twenty-six years. He has litigated education, employment, voting rights, housing, police misconduct, capital punishment and other civil rights cases in trial and appellate courts, and in the United States Supreme Court.From 1982 until 1987, he litigated education, housing, and capital punishment cases and directed LDF's education litigation docket. In 1987, under the direction of LDF's third Director-Counsel, Julius Chambers, Mr. Shaw relocated to Los Angeles to establish LDF's Western Regional Office. In 1990, Mr. Shaw left LDF to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, where he taught Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Civil Rights. While at Michigan, he played a key role in initiating a review of the law school's admissions practices and policies, and served on the faculty committee that promulgated the admissions program that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger.
In 1993, Mr. Shaw returned to LDF as Associate Director-Counsel, and in 2004, he became LDF's fifth Director-Counsel. Mr. Shaw's legal career began as a Trial Attorney in the Honors Program of the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., where he worked from 1979 until 1982.
Mr. Shaw has testified on numerous occasions before Congress and before state and local legislatures. His human rights work has taken him to Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. In addition to teaching at Columbia and at Michigan Law School, Professor Shaw held the 1997-1998 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law at Queens College and the 2003 Phyllis Beck Chair at Temple Law School. He was a visiting scholar at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia in 2008-2009. He is a member of the faculty of the Practicing Law Institute (PLI).
Mr. Shaw served on the Obama Transition Team after the 2008 presidential election, as team leader for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
Freelance Journalist and Author
Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.
Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.
Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.
Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.
Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.
Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
Partner, O'Melveny & Myers LLP
Walter Dellinger is an influential authority on appellate and Supreme Court decisions, lending his experience as a former Solicitor General and decades of legal knowledge to amicus briefs, a multitude of pro bono clients, and public and private companies involved in bet-the-company litigation. A frequent commentator for the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and major television networks, Walter holds the designation of the Douglas B. Maggs Emeritus Professor of Law at Duke University. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal and recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Lawyer.
Walter, who formerly served as O’Melveny’s Diversity and Inclusion Partner, helped convince the US Supreme Court that proponents of Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage, did not have standing to appeal a court order invalidating it. That ruling, Hollingsworth v. Perry, cleared the way for marriage equality in California and eventually nationwide.
Walter served as Assistant Attorney General and head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from 1993 to 1996. He was acting Solicitor General for the 1996-97 Term of the US Supreme Court. During that time, Walter argued nine cases before the Court, the most by any Solicitor General in more than 20 years. His arguments included cases dealing with physician-assisted suicide, the line item veto, the cable television act, the Brady Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the constitutionality of remedial services for parochial school children.
Walter has served as Special Counsel to the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange in connection with the NYSE’s transformation into a publicly held company and its acquisition of an electronic trading company.
After serving in early 1993 in the White House as an advisor to the President on constitutional issues, Walter was nominated by the President to be Assistant Attorney General. He was confirmed by the Senate in October 1993 and served for three years. As head of the OLC, Walter issued opinions on a wide variety of issues, including: the President's authority to deploy United States forces in Haiti and Bosnia; whether the trade agreements required treaty ratification; and a major review of separation of powers questions. He provided extensive legal advice on questions arising out of the shutdown of the federal government, on national debt ceiling issues, and on loan guarantees for Mexico.
Walter has published articles on constitutional issues for scholarly journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and the Duke Law Journal, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, the New Republic, and the London Times. He has been a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Belgium and has given lectures to university faculties in Florence, Siena, Nuremberg, Copenhagen, Leiden, Utrecht, Tilburg, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro, and has delivered major lectures at Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Michigan, Berkeley, Penn, Duke, Chicago, and other US law schools. He has testified more than 25 times before committees of Congress.
In private practice, Walter’s arguments before the United States Supreme Court have included Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, Morgan Stanley Capital Group Inc. v. Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County, Alabama v. North Carolina, Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, Heller v. District of Columbia, Jackson v. Birmingham School District, Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington, US Airways v. Barnett, Utah v. Evans, Hunt v. Cromartie, and Hunt v. Easley. His most notable Court of Appeals and state supreme court arguments include Martha Stewart v. United States, Whiteside v. United States, and Exxon v. Alabama, LCI v. Phillips.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
Distinguished University Professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
University Professor Nelson Lund is the author of Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy: A New Introduction. He has also written widely in the field of constitutional law, including articles on constitutional interpretation, federalism, separation of powers, the Second Amendment, the Commerce Clause, the Speech or Debate Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Uniformity Clause. In addition, he has published articles in the fields of employment discrimination and civil rights, the legal regulation of medical ethics, and the application of economic analysis to legal institutions and legal ethics.
Professor Lund graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, after which he received an MA in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a PhD in political science from Harvard University. He left the faculty of the University of Chicago to attend its law school, where he served as executive editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and chapter chairman of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. After law school, he held positions at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Solicitor General and the Office of Legal Counsel. He also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and to the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court. Following his clerkship with Justice O'Connor, Professor Lund served in the White House as associate counsel to the president from 1989 to 1992.
Since joining the faculty at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, Professor Lund has taught Constitutional Law, Legislation, Federal Election Law, Employment Discrimination, State and Local Government, and seminars on the Second Amendment and on a variety of topics in Jurisprudence.
Chairman and Founding General Counsel, Institute for Justice
William H. (Chip) Mellor serves as chairman and founding general counsel of the Institute for Justice, which he co-founded in 1991. He was IJ’s president and general counsel from 1991 to 2015. He has litigated cutting-edge constitutional cases nationwide protecting economic liberty, property rights, school choice and the First Amendment, notably achieving the first federal appellate court victory for economic liberty under the 14th Amendment since the New Deal by overturning Tennessee’s prohibition on retail casket sales.
Under Mellor’s leadership IJ pioneered a new approach to strategic public interest litigation that combines courtroom advocacy with award-winning media relations, activism and strategic research to secure constitutional protection for individual rights. He grew IJ from a five-person startup into the National Law Firm for Liberty with a staff of nearly 100, including over 40 attorneys, and an annual budget of $20 million. IJ is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, and has offices in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Texas and Washington state.
While Mellor was president, IJ litigated five U.S. Supreme Court cases, winning all but one: In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, IJ successfully defended Cleveland’s school choice program from a lawsuit brought by the teachers’ unions and other school choice opponents, establishing the constitutionality of school vouchers. In Granholm v. Heald, the Supreme Court struck down New York’s ban on interstate wine sales, allowing small wineries and consumers represented by IJ to successfully challenge a government-imposed wholesale wine and liquor monopoly. In Kelo v. City of New London, the Supreme Court ruled against IJ in a controversial 5–4 decision that held private property can be taken for private development. IJ mobilized unprecedented public outrage over the decision to secure legislative reforms or state supreme court decisions in 46 states that strengthened protection for property rights. In Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, the Supreme Court dismissed an Establishment Clause challenge to Arizona’s scholarship tax credit program because the Court recognized that individuals who donate to private, nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations spend their own money—not state funds. In Arizona Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of Arizona’s system of government-funded campaigns, which showered money on campaigns that took government funding when privately financed and independent speakers opposing them spoke more than the government wanted.
Mellor co-authored with the Cato Institute’s Robert Levy The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom, which examines 12 Supreme Court cases that effectively amended the Constitution and profoundly reshaped the role of government in America. In The Dirty Dozen, Mellor and Levy argue for judicial engagement and for a Supreme Court that will protect individual rights and restore limits on government power.
Mellor launched the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago in 1998 and IJ’s Center for Judicial Engagement in 2011.
Mellor’s work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, New York Post, National Law Journal, Reason, National Review, Investor’s Business Daily, and all the major television and radio networks. In a 2012 broadcast of his Fox Business show Stossel, John Stossel named Mellor a “Champion of Freedom.”
Prior to founding IJ, Mellor served as president of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, a nationally recognized think tank located in San Francisco. Under his leadership, the Institute commissioned and published path-breaking books on economic liberty, property rights, and technology and the First Amendment that formed the long-term, strategic litigation blueprint for the Institute for Justice.
Mellor also served in the Reagan Administration as deputy general counsel for legislation and regulations in the Department of Energy, and from 1979 to 1983 he practiced public interest law with Mountain States Legal Foundation in Denver. Mellor received his J.D. from the University of Denver School of Law in 1977. He graduated from Ohio State University in 1973.
Read Mellor’s speech launching the Institute for Justice: “The Quest for Justice: Natural Rights and the Future of Public Interest Law.”
Mellor was awarded the Bradley Prize in 2012, was recognized by the American Bar Association as a Legal Rebel – an individual who remakes their corner of the legal profession – and was profiled in the Wall Street Journal Weekend Interview on January 7, 2012, as well as in Reason magazine in March 2008.
William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Professor Tushnet, who graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School and served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, specializes in constitutional law and theory, including comparative constitutional law. His research includes studies examining (skeptically) the practice of judicial review in the United States and around the world. He also writes in the area of legal and particularly constitutional history, with works on the development of civil rights law in the United States and (currently) a long-term project on the history of the Supreme Court in the 1930s. This fall he is organizing a conference on American constitutional development and another that features a conversation among several current and former judges on the world's constitutional courts.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
James Harvie Wilkinson III is an Article III federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He joined the Court in 1984 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
Born in New York City, New York, Wilkinson graduated from Yale University with his Bachelor's degree in 1967. Wilkinson served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1969 and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1972.
On the recommendation of Virginia U.S. Senator John Warner, Wilkinson was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan on January 30, 1984 to a seat vacated by John Butzner, Jr.,. Wilkinson was confirmed by the Senate on August 9, 1984 on a Senate vote and received commission on August 13, 1984. Wilkinson served as the Chief Judge of the Court from 1996 to 2003.
Founder and Director, James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding
Hadley Arkes joined the faculty of Amherst College in 1966. He became the Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence in 1987, and held that chair until he retired officially in July 2015. But he has not retired from writing and speaking. He has carried that teaching into a new phase; he has become the Founder and Director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding in Washington, D.C. He has written eight books, mostly with Princeton and Cambridge University Presss. Among the books at Princeton have been: The Philosopher in the City (1981), First Things (1986), Beyond the Constitution (1990), and The Return of George Sutherland (1994). With Cambridge Press he has done Natural Rights and the Right to Choose (2002), and Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law (2010). His most recent book, with Regnery Press is Mere Natural Law (2023) His articles have appeared in professional journals, but apart from his writing in more scholarly formats, he has become known to a wider audience through his writings in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Civitas and First Things, a journal that took its name from his book of that title.
He was the main advocate, and architect, of the bill that became known as the Born-Alive Infants’ Protection Act. The account of his experience, in moving the bill through Congress, is contained as an epilogue or memoir in his book, Natural Rights & the Right to Choose. Arkes first prepared his proposal as part of the debating kit assembled for the first George Bush in 1988. The purpose of that proposal was to offer the “most modest first step” of all in legislating on abortion, and opening a conversation even with people who called themselves “pro-choice.” Professor Arkes proposed to begin simply by preserving the life of a child who survived an abortion–contrary to the holding of one federal judge, that such a child was not protected by the laws. Professor Arkes led the testimony on the bill before the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House in July 2000, then again in July 2001. The legislative calendar was upended in the aftermath of September 11th, but in March 2002, the bill was brought to the floor of the House, where it passed unanimously. To the surprise of Professor Arkes, the bill was brought to the floor of the Senate on July 18 by the Deputy Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and passed in the same way. On August 5, President Bush signed the bill into law with Professor Arkes in attendance.
Professor Arkes was the founder, at Amherst, of the Committee for the American Founding, a group of alumni and students seeking to preserve, at Amherst, the doctrines of “natural rights” taught by the American Founders and Lincoln. That interest has been carried over now to the founding of a new center for the jurisprudence of natural law, in Washington, D.C.: the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding, named for one of the premier minds among the American Founders. Professor Arkes has drawn to this project a cluster of accomplished federal judges who have wanted to get a firmer hold on the natural law, and brought them together with some gifted teachers of philosophy and law. The new institute will be sponsoring lectures and seminars in Washington and other parts of the country. The purpose of this new James Wilson Institute is to teach anew, to lawyers, judges, and students those principles of law that furnished the guide to the American Founders as they set about framing a Constitution. And the hope is to restore, to a new generation, the furnishings of mind of the men who formed this regime.
Special Counsel, Hunton Andrews Kurth
After serving on the United State Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit from 2005, Judge Griffith stepped down from the bench in 2020. Currently he is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, a Fellow at the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, and Special Counsel in the Washington, DC office of the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth. Most recently, he was a member of President Biden's Commission on the Supreme Court. He is the author of Civic Charity and the Constitution , and the co-author, along with former judges Michael Luttig and Michael McConnell, of Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election. https://lostnotstolen.org/ . Before being appointed to the D. C. Circuit, Judge Griffith was the General Counsel at BYU; Senate Legal Counsel, the non-partisan chief legal officer of the U. S. Senate; and a partner at Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Long active in rule-of-law programs in former communist nations, Judge Griffith is a member of the international advisory board of the CEELI Institute in Prague. He is a graduate of BYU and the University of Virginia School of Law and is a member of the American Law Institute.
Former Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Kozinski served as a United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit from November 1985 until December 2017. He served as Chief Judge from 2007 to 2014. He graduated from UCLA, receiving an A.B. degree in 1972, and from UCLA Law School, receiving a J.D. degree in 1975.
Prior to his appointment to the appellate bench, Judge Kozinski served as Chief Judge of the United States Claims Court, 1982-85; Special Counsel, Merit Systems Protection Board, 1981-82; Assistant Counsel, Office of Counsel to the President, 1981; Deputy Legal Counsel, Office of President-Elect Reagan, 1980-81; Attorney, Covington & Burling, 1979-81; Attorney, Forry Golbert Singer & Gelles, 1977-79; Law Clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, 1976-77; and Law Clerk to Circuit Judge Anthony M. Kennedy, 1975-76.
Judge Kozinski is married to Marcy Jane Tiffany and has three children: Yale, Wyatt and Clayton, and three grandchildren: Quinn, Owen and Anna.
Former President & CEO, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Eugene B. Meyer, former President and CEO of the Federalist Society, has served as Executive Director, CEO, and/or President of the organization for more than 40 years. He is responsible for shepherding the organization from a small group of law students to a community of 90,000 lawyers, law students, academics, judges, and others interested in the rule of law. The Society now includes a Student Chapter at nearly every ABA-accredited law school in the country and Lawyers Chapters in 220 major cities across the nation. Gene earned his B.A. in history at Yale in 1975 and his M.A. in political science from the London School of Economics in 1976. Gene currently serves on the boards of the U.S. Chess Center, the Holman Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the advisory board of the Adam Smith Society. He holds the title of International Chess Master.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Distinguished Fellow, Hudson Institute
Christopher DeMuth is a distinguished fellow at Hudson Institute. He was president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) from 1986 to 2008 and was the D.C. Searle Senior Fellow at AEI from 2008 to 2011.
Mr. DeMuth was raised in Kenilworth, Illinois, and attended the Lawrenceville School (1964), Harvard College (A.B. 1968), and the University of Chicago Law School (J.D. 1973). He served as staff assistant to President Richard M. Nixon from 1969 to 1970, working first for Daniel P. Moynihan (then assistant to the President for Urban Affairs) on urban policy matters and then as chairman of the White House Task Force on Environmental Policy. Following law school, he practiced regulatory, antitrust, and general corporate law with Sidley & Austin in Chicago (1973-1976) and was associate general counsel of the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) in Philadelphia (1976-1977).
From 1977 to 1981, Mr. DeMuth was lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and director of the Harvard Faculty Project on Regulation. There he taught courses on law, economics, and regulatory policy and conducted and sponsored research on health, safety, environmental, and economic regulation.
Returning to Washington in 1981, Mr. DeMuth served as administrator for information and regulatory affairs in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and as executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief during President Ronald Reagan’s first term of office. From 1984 to 1986, he was managing director of Lexecon Inc., a law-and-economics consulting firm; in 1986, he was also publisher and editor-in-chief of Regulation magazine. He was elected president of the American Enterprise Institute in December 1986.
Many of Mr. DeMuth’s articles, lectures, and occasional talks are posted on his website (https://www.ccdemuth.com).
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Judge Hardiman was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on January 9, 2007 and was confirmed by the Senate (95-0) on March 15, 2007. Prior to becoming an appellate judge, Judge Hardiman served as a trial judge on the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania as of November 1, 2003. In 2008, Chief Justice John Roberts appointed Judge Hardiman to the Information Technology Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Judge Hardiman was appointed Chairman of the IT Committee in 2013 and served in that capacity until September 2021. In 2021 he was appointed by the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts to serve as Chair of the Judiciary IT Security Task Force, which completed its work in fall 2023. Chief Justice Roberts appointed Judge Hardiman to the Board of the Federal Judicial Center to serve from March 2020 until March 2024. As part of his work with the Center, Judge Hardiman now serves as Editor in Chief for the Manual for Complex Civil Litigation, Fifth.
Before entering judicial service, Judge Hardiman handled a wide variety of litigation matters in state and federal trial and appellate courts as a partner at Reed Smith LLP (1999-2003), a partner at Titus & McConomy LLP (1996-1999), and as an associate with its predecessor firm, Cindrich & Titus (1992-1996). Judge Hardiman began his legal career as an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (1990-1992).
A 1987 honors graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Judge Hardiman received his law degree in 1990 from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as a Notes and Comments Editor on the Georgetown Law Journal. In 2012, Judge Hardiman was elected as a member of the American Law Institute and was elected to its Council in 2019 and its Executive Committee in 2025. Judge Hardiman regularly teaches a seminar on Advanced Constitutional Law at Duquesne University School of Law and a one-week course entitled “Constitutional Law: the First and Second Amendments” at Georgetown University Law Center.
A native of Waltham, Massachusetts, Judge Hardiman has chambers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Lori married in 1992 and have three children.
Robert L. Willett Family Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law
Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, J.D., holds the Robert L. Willett Family Professorship of Law at the Washington and Lee University School of Law. He is a coauthor of a casebook, Health Law, used widely throughout the United States in teaching health law and now in its sixth edition. He is also the author of Health Care at Risk, A Critique of the Consumer-Driven Movement, Health Care Coverage Determinations: An International Comparative Study, Readings in Comparative Health Law and Bioethics, and many articles and book chapters on health care regulation and comparative health law and policy. He has written numerous monographs on legal issues in health care reform for national organizations and blogs regularly for Health Affairs on regulatory issues. He is a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and a member of the Institute of Medicine.
Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States
Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh was born in Washington, D.C., on February 12, 1965. He married Ashley Estes in 2004, and they have two daughters - Margaret and Liza. He received a B.A. from Yale College in 1987 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1990. He served as a law clerk for Judge Walter Stapleton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1990-1991, for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1991-1992, and for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1993 Term. In 1992-1993, he was an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States. From 1994 to 1997 and for a period in 1998, he was Associate Counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel. He was a partner at a Washington, D.C., law firm from 1997 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was Associate Counsel and then Senior Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush. From 2003 to 2006, he was Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary for President Bush. He was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2006. President Donald J. Trump nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat on October 6, 2018.
Shareholder, Farney Daniels, PC
Jonathan B. Baker is Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, where he teaches courses primarily in the areas of antitrust and economic regulation. He served as the Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission from 2009 to 2011, and as the Director of the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission from 1995 to 1998. Previously, he worked as a Senior Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, an Assistant Professor at Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, an Attorney Advisor to the Acting Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, and an antitrust lawyer in private practice. Professor Baker is the co-author of an antitrust casebook, a past Editorial Chair of Antitrust Law Journal, and a past member of the Council of the American Bar Association’s Section of Antitrust Law. He has published widely in the fields of antitrust law and policy and industrial organization economics. In 2004 he received American University’s Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Research, and Other Professional Accomplishments, and in 1998 he received the Federal Trade Commission’s Award for Distinguished Service. He has a J.D. from Harvard and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.
Richard W. Pogue Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Professor Daniel Crane is the Richard W. Pogue Professor of Law. He served as the associate dean for faculty and research from 2013 to 2016. He teaches Contracts, Antitrust, Antitrust and Intellectual Property, and Legislation and Regulation.
Crane previously was a professor of law at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a visiting professor at New York University School of Law and the University of Chicago Law School. In spring 2009, he taught antitrust law on a Fulbright Scholarship at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon.
Crane's work has appeared in the University of Chicago Law Review, the California Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Cornell Law Review, among other journals. He is the author of several books on antitrust law, including Antitrust (Aspen, 2014), The Making of Competition Policy: Legal and Economic Sources (Oxford University Press, 2013), and The Institutional Structure of Antitrust Enforcement (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Jennifer Walker Elrod is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was nominated to the Fifth Circuit in 2007, and she served as a Circuit Judge on the court until assuming the role of Chief Judge in October 2024. Prior to serving as a Circuit Judge, Chief Judge Elrod was appointed and then twice elected Judge of the 190th District Court of Harris County, Texas, where she spent over five years presiding over more than 200 jury and non-jury trials.
Chief Judge Elrod graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an active member of the Harvard Federalist Society, an Ames Moot Court finalist, and a Senior Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She clerked for the Honorable Sim Lake in the Southern District of Texas. Before serving as a judge, Chief Judge Elrod worked in private practice, focusing on civil litigation, antitrust, and employment matters.
She has been repeatedly recognized for her work as a jurist, as well as for her pro bono work and contributions to the community. She has been named the 2022 Texas Review of Law & Politics’ Jurist of the Year, the 2018 Harvard Federalist Society’s Alumni of the Year, the 2016–17 Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists’ Appellate Judge of the Year, and the 2008 Mexican-American Bar Association of Texas’s Judge of the Year.
Chief Judge Elrod is actively engaged in the academic and legal communities. Chief Judge Elrod currently serves on the Board of Directors and as the Jurist-in-Residence at the South Texas College of Law, where she teaches civil procedure and First Amendment law. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and she is a former member of the Board of Regents of her alma mater, Baylor University, and the Board of Visitors at Brigham Young University Law School. She previously served as the Chair of the Codes of Conduct Committee for the Judicial Conference of the United States. She has also served as the M.D. Anderson Visiting Public Service Professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law and as Jurist-in-Residence at Brigham Young University Law School, and she has taught legal writing at the University of Houston Law Center. She presented the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and is a frequent speaker on the topics of trial and appellate procedure, ethics, employment law, and constitutional law. Chief Judge Elrod also serves on the board of the Garland R. Walker Inn of Court, and co-produces an annual musical CLE, for which her pupilage group has won multiple national awards.
Chief Judge Elrod’s publications include: Trial by Siri: AI Comes to the Courtroom; Don’t Mess with Texas Judges: In Praise of the State Judiciary; For Good: Enriching Your Practice and Your Life Through Pro Bono and Community Service; Is the Jury Still Out?: A Case for the Continued Viability of the American Jury; and W(h)ither the Jury? The Diminishing Role of the Jury Trial in our Legal System.
Partner, Cooley
Rob McDowell advises telecommunications, media and technology clients on their most significant regulatory, legal and business matters. As a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a highly regarded industry leader, Rob has been at the forefront of the most complex and groundbreaking issues facing telecommunications.
Mr. McDowell was first appointed to the FCC by President George W. Bush in 2006 and again by President Obama in 2009. He was unanimously confirmed both times by the US Senate. During his tenure, Mr. McDowell led efforts to expand consumer access to spectrum through his work on the two largest wireless auctions in US history at the time, played a key role in the 2009 digital television transition and led efforts to establish the first federal civil rights rule in a generation by creating a ban on racially discriminatory practices in broadcast advertising. He also worked extensively on several large and complex mergers, including Sirius/XM and Comcast/NBC-Universal.
He is an advocate for internet freedom, serving on the US delegation to the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications and exposing an international bid to regulate vital aspects of the Internet through multilateral treaty-based organizations. Mr. McDowell authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal opposing multilateral internet regulation that led to a resolution passed unanimously in the House and Senate, as well as the ultimate defeat of the international bid at a treaty negation in Dubai later that year.
Prior to the FCC, Mr. McDowell was senior vice president for CompTel, the Competitive Telecommunications Association, where he led advocacy efforts before several government agencies, the White House and Congress.
Mr. McDowell is often called upon for speaking engagements and frequently appears on TV and radio. He has written opinion pieces for many high-profile publications, including the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
Partner, Antitrust and Competition, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Maureen Ohlhausen is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she advises industry-leading clients on complex antitrust and litigation matters, with a focus on high-profile cases. Sought after for her depth of experience on antitrust and Federal Trade Commission (FTC)-related issues, Maureen is known for her relationships with officials in the U.S. and abroad.
After finishing law school and clerking at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Maureen joined the FTC in 1997. She held a series of roles at the agency over the next 12 years, rising to the position of Director of the FTC Office of Policy Planning, where she led the agency’s work on e-commerce and headed the FTC’s Internet Access Task Force, which produced an influential report analyzing competition and consumer protection legal issues in the broadband and internet sectors. She then went into private practice at a leading telecommunications law firm, where she headed the FTC practice group.
In 2012, Maureen was confirmed by the Senate as a Commissioner of the FTC and was appointed Acting Chairman in January 2017, a role she held until May 2018. As Acting Chairman, Maureen directed all aspects of the agency’s antitrust work, including merger review, conduct enforcement, and all consumer protection enforcement, with an emphasis on privacy and technology issues. Under her leadership, the FTC won several influential merger challenges in court and reached a number of key digital privacy settlements.
To date, Maureen is the only FTC Commissioner to have received the Robert Pitofsky Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her contributions to the FTC.
Following the end of her term at the FTC, and immediately prior to joining Wilson Sonsini, Maureen was chair of the global antitrust and competition practice at Baker Botts, based in that firm’s Washington, D.C., office.
A recognized thought leader, Maureen is a frequent author and speaker, and is often quoted by leading print and broadcast media on antitrust, FTC, and privacy and data security matters. She has published dozens of articles on antitrust, privacy, intellectual property, regulation, FTC litigation, telecommunications, and international law issues in prestigious publications. During her tenure at the FTC and in private practice, she testified more than two dozen times before Congress, including before the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Antitrust Sub-Committee. She also testified before the Antitrust Modernization Commission.
Nonresident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Ajit Pai, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on issues pertaining to technology and innovation, telecommunications regulatory policy, and market-based incentives for investment in broadband deployment. Concurrently, he is a partner at Searchlight Capital Partners, a global investment firm.
Mr. Pai’s distinguished career at the FCC includes two leadership roles following presidential appointments. He was appointed commissioner by President Barack Obama in 2012, designated chairman by President Donald Trump in 2017, and twice confirmed by the US Senate. While at the helm of the FCC, Mr. Pai had a transformative impact on the future of US technology and communications policy, implementing major initiatives to help close the digital divide; advance US leadership in 5G and other wireless technologies; promote innovation; protect consumers, public safety, and national security; and make the agency itself more open, transparent, and data-driven.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Pai served in various public-sector positions in the FCC’s Office of General Counsel, the US Department of Justice, the US Senate Judiciary Committee, and the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. He also worked as a partner at Jenner & Block and associate general counsel at Verizon Communications.
Mr. Pai graduated with honors from Harvard University, where he received a bachelor’s degree, and from the University of Chicago Law School, where he received a law degree and was an editor on the University of Chicago Law Review.
Partner, Bracewell & Giuliani LLP
Jason Hutt advises energy companies, manufacturers, project developers, investor groups and financial institutions about environmental risks and liabilities associated with regulatory compliance, project development, congressional investigations, internal investigations and corporate transactions. He also assists in the defense of administrative, civil and criminal proceedings involving environmental enforcement agencies at the federal and state levels.
Mr. Hutt counsels clients on current and upcoming regulatory developments at the nexus of environmental and energy policy, with focused attention on natural gas development (including hydraulic fracturing), responses to the Deepwater Horizon incident, and climate change. He is nationally recognized for his work on shale gas issues on behalf of producers, oil field services companies, hedge funds and technology developers.
Mr. Hutt routinely is involved in identifying, evaluating and managing environmental risks and opportunities associated with corporate acquisitions, divestitures and financings, including environmental due diligence, purchase and sale agreement negotiation, and post-closing integration efforts. Within the energy sector, his representative experience includes transactions involving petroleum refineries, liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminals, renewable energy projects (e.g., wind, biofuels and geothermal), natural gas processing plants, cogeneration facilities, oil and gas wells, pipelines, propane retailers and synfuel facilities.
Representative work in other sectors involves operations and industries such as chemical manufacturers, oil field services, independent tank terminal operators, glass manufacturing, textiles manufacturing, uranium mining, industrial cleaning operations, hazardous waste management facilities, paper and plastic manufacturing facilities, and medical equipment manufacturing facilities.
Mr. Hutt performs environmental risk evaluations and advises on permit strategy and contract negotiation in relation to project development. His most recent work has involved onshore and offshore LNG import terminals, highway expansions, coal-fired power plant siting on tribal lands, utility privatizations at military bases, international undersea pipelines, interstate undersea electric transmission cables and a pump-storage project.
Distinguished Professor of Law, Widener University Delaware Law School
James R. May is Distinguished Professor of Law, and Chief Sustainability Officer, Widener University (USA). He also serves as co-Director of the Environmental Rights Institute and co-Director of the Dignity Rights Project at Widener University Delaware Law School. May is also an Adjunct Professor of Graduate Engineering, and founded and co-chairs a program on marine policy. May is the editor of Principles of Constitutional Environmental Law (American Bar Association), and co-editor of Shale Gas and the Future of Energy (Edward Elgar), Global Environmental Constitutionalism (Cambridge), Environmental Constitutionalism in Context (Edward Elgar), New Frontiers in Environmental Constitutionalism (United National Environment Programme, forthcoming), Implementing Environmental Constitutionalism(Cambridge, forthcoming), Standards of Environmental Constitutionalism (Cambridge, forthcoming), and Human Rights and the Environment: Indivisibility, Dignity and Legality (Edward Elgar, forthcoming). May is also author or co-author of more than 100 articles and book chapters, and numerous amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. federal courts of appeal on issues including environmental law, constitutional law, comparative constitutional, international environmental law, environmental rights, and human dignity.
May founded two non-profit environmental organizations (the Mid-Atlantic and the Eastern Environmental Law Centers), and has litigated more than 200 public interest environmental claims, including cases throughout the Mid-Atlantic to restore water and air quality, conserve rare species and habitats, and protect biodiversity.
May is a Member of Faculty to the National Judicial College, and a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, for whom he has served as a delegate to Haiti and China. May has also served as a consultant to the U.S. Embassy on legal education in the Philippines, and to the Hungarian Embassy and the Moroccan Human Rights Council on constitutional reform. May is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, serves on numerous boards, and has won numerous awards, including from Pace University, Sierra Club, and the American Canoe Association. He earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kansas (Bowman Scholar), J.D. from the University of Kansas (Appellate Advocacy Scholar and national moot court champion), and LL.M. in Environmental Law from Pace University, where he was the Feldshuh Fellow and graduated first in class.
May is a member of the bar in the State of Pennsylvania, several federal courts of appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Associate Attorney, Sierra Club Environmental Law Program
Craig Segall started at the Sierra Club in 2008 as an environmental law fellow. Before coming to the Club, Craig was a law clerk to the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and of Stanford Law School, where he spent most of his time in the basement working with Stanford's environmental law clinic. When not practicing law, Craig keeps busy outdoors. In recent years, he has barely beaten a 12-year-old to the top of Mount Whitney, accidentally driven transmission-deep into a salt lake, and, on an ill-advised hike in South Africa, provoked a surprisingly aggressive ostrich.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit
Judge Tymkovich, of Denver, Colorado, was nominated to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush, and confirmed in April 2003. On October 1, 2015 he became Chief Circuit Judge and held this position until October 2022. He was Chair of the US Judicial Conference’s Committee on Judicial Resources from 2011 to 2015. Since 2008 he has been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching Election Law. He is a member of the Doyle Inn of Court, the American Law Institute, and the International Society of Barristers. Since he joined the Circuit, Judge Tymkovich has hosted judicial delegations from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan, and has also represented the United States in programs at Kiev and Yalta in Ukraine.
Professor of Political Science, Brown University
COREY BRETTSCHNEIDER is professor of political science at Brown University, where he teaches courses in political theory and public law. He is also professor, by courtesy, of philosophy. Brettschneider was a Rockefeller faculty fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values for the 2010-2011 academic year, a visiting associate professor at Harvard Law School for the 2009 winter term, and a faculty fellow at Harvard's Safra Center for Ethics for the 2006-2007 academic year. Brettschneider received a PhD in politics from Princeton University and a JD from Stanford University. He is the author ofWhen the State Speaks, What Should it Say? How Democracies Can Protect Expression and Promote Equality, (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Democratic Rights: The Substance of Self-Government (Princeton University Press, 2007). Brettschneider is also the author of a casebook, Constitutional Law and American Democracy: Cases and Readings, (Aspen Publishers/Wolters Kluwer Law and Business, 2011). His articles include "A Transformative Theory of Religious Freedom," in Political Theory (2010), "When the State Speaks, What Should it Say? Democratic Persuasion and the Freedom of Expression," in Perspectives on Politics (2010), and "The Politics of the Personal: A Liberal Approach," in the American Political Science Review (2007).
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; CEO, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Chief Executive Officer at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
He writes on constitutional law and its history—with particular emphasis on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, judicial office, administrative power, and unconstitutional conditions.
His books are Separation of Church and State (Harvard 2002), Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard 2008), Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Chicago 2014), The Administrative Threat (Encounter 2017), and Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech (Chicago 2018). A forthcoming book is Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom (Harvard 2021).
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He has twice received the Sutherland Prize for the most significant contribution to English legal history, and has been awarded the Henry Paolucci - Walter Bagehot Book Award, the Hayek Book Prize, and the Bradley Prize.
United States District Court, Eastern District of New York
William Francis Kuntz II is a United States district judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The United States Senate confirmed him on October 3, 2011. He received his judicial commission on October 4, 2011.
Judge Kuntz was a commercial litigator in private practice in New York, and had been a partner at the law firm of Baker Hostetler since 2005. He has been a partner at several law firms in New York during his career, including Torys LLP from 2001 to 2004, Seward & Kissel LLP from 1994 to 2001, and Milgrim, Thomajan, Jacobs & Lee from 1986 to 1994. In addition, he worked as Counsel at Constantine Cannon from 2004 to 2005, and as an associate at Shearman & Sterling LLP from 1978 to 1986. Since 1987, Kuntz has served as a Commissioner of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, supervising hundreds of investigations into allegations of abuse by members of the New York City Police Department. From 1987 to 2003, he was an adjunct associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, teaching a course in American legal history. He received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1972 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1977. Kuntz also received an M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from Harvard University in 1974 and 1979, respectively.
William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
William (Bill) Marshall joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2001 and serves as the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law. His teaching and research interests include the first amendment, presidential power, election law, federal jurisdiction, federal judicial selection, civil procedure, and media law. Marshall is the author of numerous book chapters, articles, and essays on free speech, separation of powers, the Establishment Clause, and the Free Exercise Clause. His work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Supreme Court Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review, among others.
Marshall received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Marshall was Deputy Counsel to the President and Deputy Assistant to the President during the Clinton Administration and also served as the Solicitor General for the State of Ohio. He has taught at the Northwestern, Boston University, Vanderbilt, Ohio State, DePaul, Case Western Reserve, William and Mary, and the University Connecticut law schools. Prior to beginning his teaching career, Marshall was a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Showcase Panel III: Religion Clauses
Corey Brettschneider, Philip A. Hamburger, William Kuntz, William P. Marshall, Michael W. McConnell, Dean Reuter
The current Supreme Court divided five to four in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v....
Showcase Panel III: Religion Clauses
Corey Brettschneider, Philip A. Hamburger, William Kuntz, William P. Marshall, Michael W. McConnell, Dean Reuter
The current Supreme Court divided five to four in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v....
Civil Rights: Who Benefits from Affirmative Action and Race and Gender Consciousness?
Carlos T. Bea, Martin Castro, Gail L. Heriot, Theodore M. Shaw, Stuart S. Taylor
The Civil Rights Practice Group hosted this panel on "Who Benefits from Affirmative Action and...
Civil Rights: Who Benefits from Affirmative Action and Race and Gender Consciousness?
Carlos T. Bea, Martin Castro, Gail L. Heriot, Theodore M. Shaw, Stuart S. Taylor
The Civil Rights Practice Group hosted this panel on "Who Benefits from Affirmative Action and...
Showcase Panel IV: An Examination of Substantive Due Process and Judicial Activism
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCFifth Annual Rosenkranz Debate and Luncheon
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCAdministrative Law: The Administrative State After the Health Care Cases
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCTelecommunications: Communications Law Reform
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCEnvironmental Law: Federalism and the Energy Revolution: Can State and Federal Regulators Adapt to Innovations?
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCShowcase Panel III: Religion Clauses
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DC